Smuggling trial opens for Bahamian captain

June 12, 2008|By Sally Apgar Staff Writer

West Palm Beach — Federal prosecutors say that the final drug and immigrant smuggling run of a Bahamian sea captain known as "Tricks" came to an end in the churning surf off Jupiter Island when he forced 10 passengers to jump from his idling speedboat.

Moments later, the twin-engine boat ran aground on the rocky shore in the dark early morning of Dec. 28, 2006.

Not far from the boat, police later found the body of a 64-year-old Jamaican man with an orange life vest twisted around his neck and a black duffel bag containing 83 pounds of marijuana.

The murder and drug smuggling trial of Rickey Thompson, 42, opened Wednesday with federal prosecutors painting a picture of a cocaine-snorting captain, who forced his passengers, sometimes at gunpoint, off his boat in rough seas far from shore. The immigrants, mostly from Jamaica and Haiti, each paid him $3,000 for the three-hour trip from Freeport.

That December night, Nigel Warren, known as "Pops," begged to stay aboard because he couldn't swim. But Thompson wouldn't listen. And prosecutors say that at least two other people, both Haitian, also drowned on one of Thompson's smuggling runs the previous August to the same remote rocky spot off Blowing Rocks Preserve.

Along with the murder of three people and the smuggling of 14 illegal aliens, Thompson is accused of importing cocaine, heroin and marijuana. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment and more than $37 million in fines.

"This trial is about three people who lost their lives when Rickey Thompson forced them off of his boat," Assistant U.S. Attorney Adrienne Rabinowitz said in her opening statement. "This is a trial about people who prey on illegal aliens, people who see a way to make money and charge them for sneaking into this country."

Defense attorney David Patrick Rowe told jurors that Thompson is "a gentle sea-faring sea dog" and not an "evil genius organizing a major alien smuggling and drug smuggling conspiracy."

"This conspiracy is a figment of the U.S. government's imagination or the American government's misunderstanding of the cultural practices of Bahamians," Rowe said.

According to the indictment, Thompson and his co-captain, Leon Brice Johnson, made two smuggling runs in August 2006 and December 2006. After the August trip, the U.S. Coast Guard found the body of Roselyne Lubin floating face down in the water. Not long afterward, the body of another Haitian, Alnert Charles, was found washed up on the beach. Johnson struck a plea agreement in March and is scheduled for sentencing in August.